Will Beto Be America's First Latino President? The Same Way Bill Clinton Was America's First Black President?

Syndicated columnist and Fox News commentator Ruben Navarrette claims he's "the most widely read Latino columnist in the country, and the 16th most popular columnist in America." His perspective is distinctly right-of-center and over the weekend he was on the pretty massive anti-Beto bandwagon-- using political correctness against him (cultural appropriation-- which even liberals are starting to hate). The title of his USA Today column, For Latinos, 'Beto' O'Rourke Is Just Another Privileged White Guy Trying To Manipulate Them. Not as savage as Tim Russo's brutal and highly personal take-down (complete with musical critique), Navarrette wrote that "O'Rourke hasn't earned the familiarity he allegedly has with Latinos. He should know that life in America's largest racial minority isn't all fiestas... [T]hat’s basically the refrain I’ve heard from dozens of Latinos who-- unlike the media, which is run by white liberals who are fascinated by other white liberals-- refuse to go loco for Beto."

They’re concerned that Robert Francis O’Rourke, who this week joined an already-crowded field of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls, is trying to put one over on Latinos by tricking them into thinking he’s one of them. Or, at the very least, they think that his strategy, or that of his handlers, is to come across to Latinos as a simpatico who connects with them the way that Bill Clinton-- who writer Toni Morrison mischievously dubbed “our first black president”-- connected with African-Americans. At least until Barack Obama came along, and the Clinton machine tried, and failed, to destroy him.

So is that the deal? Is O’Rourke aiming to become America’s first Latino president?

Por favor. Please. Speaking as a Mexican-American, let me spare you the suspense: That zapato won’t fit. Sorry, Beto, you’re no Bill Clinton.

What actual Latinos tell me is that they resent the presumptuousness of this supposed familiarity that we’re told Beto feels with a community that he has done, at best, a mediocre job of representing when he had the chance.

For instance, at a time when Latinos feel under siege by ethnocentrism and anti-immigrant demagoguery, where was O’Rourke on the explosive immigration issue during his three terms in the House of Representatives? Judging from the comments by lawmakers who served with him, it appears he was in hiding.

But hey, let’s cut the guy some slack for going AWOL when Latinos needed him. O’Rourke hails from the border city of El Paso, Texas. Where would anyone encounter immigrants in a place like that?

The Democrat is also criticized for not reaching out to Latino voters in Texas during his Senate race last year against incumbent Ted Cruz, perhaps thinking he had them in the bag and so he could take them for granted.

One Mexican-American professor who teaches at a university in San Diego criticized that the politician called himself "Beto." He said it seems like O'Rourke is taking advantage of his nickname to pretend to be something he’s not.

Another professor and lawyer, who is Panamanian-American, said that O'Rourke hasn't lived the life of a Hispanic man. As a white male, his life was easier. And it still is.

A Mexican-American woman who works in public relations told me he seems condescending. Given his privilege, it is irritating that he seems to pretend that he knows and understands what bothers a demographic that he’s not part of.

The Beto backlash reminds of the idea of stolen valor, the righteous outrage felt by combat veterans when others who didn’t see action claim medals they don’t deserve.

You see, being a member of America’s largest minority-- especially in the Donald Trump era-- isn’t all fiestas and churros. And if you haven’t had your ticket punched, you don’t get to take the ride.

Now let’s deal with this business about the name. Who, or what, gave birth to the legend of Beto?

Robert Francis prefers to be called by that name, and he and his army of supporters-- the Beto bots-- swear it has nothing to do with politics. They even point to the fact that O’Rourke seems to have first gotten tagged with the moniker when he was a child, showing off a photo of him as a boy wearing a sweatshirt with the name “Beto” on it.

What they appear not as eager to talk about, however, is the fact that Patrick O’Rourke-- Robert Francis’ father-- once explained that he was the one who gave his son the nickname in the first place and the reason had a lot to do with politics, as well as geography.

According to the Dallas Morning News, the patriarch reasoned that if his son ever ran for office in El Paso, the odds of being elected in that largely Mexican-American city were far greater with a name like Beto.

When told of his father’s words, O’Rourke shrugged them off, calling his father “farsighted.”

I’d use different words, like cynical and dishonest and manipulative.

It's certainly not respectful to assume that people can be so easily fooled. And, as any real Latino can tell you, respect goes a long way in our community. O’Rourke should take the time to get to know us better. And, if he did, more Latinos might have a better impression of him. 

So, that'll be part of the Republican strategy if Beto makes it onto the national ticket. It's divisive... but not unsurmountable. I just love the idea of conservatives taking up the cultural appropriation cudgel for their own use though! It always seemed to me to be tailor-made for them anyway.




Alex Shephard, at the New Republic, also went to town on Beto over the weekend: The Profound Emptiness of Beto O’Rourke. Like many of us, Shephard is offended by Beto's "empty platitudes" and doesn't particularly like the comparisons to Obama, "with whom he shares a message of optimism and unity. But the comparisons end there. He has all of Obama’s self-assurance with none of his intellectual fortitude, inspirational biography, or oratory power. His rhetoric is as empty as his platform, his paeans to 'coming together' the stuff of Obama fanfic... [T]he biggest thing that O’Rourke has in common with Obama, the 2008 candidate, is the belief that they can transcend a broken political system with lofty rhetoric about bringing people together. But when Obama spoke about healing divisions, millions of people believed him. And it still didn’t work. Obama came to his senses while in office, as the Republican Party committed itself to bigotry and intransigence, and he now spends his political capital and energy on reforming our broken democracy. Many of the Democratic candidates for president have their own proposals for doing so. O’Rourke just has a blog, and a big beautiful smile that some folks can’t resist. It’s as if the last ten years of American political life never happened."

Do You Ever Wonder About The Things We've Done, As A Nation, That Have Made Us Deserve Trump?-- Just Asking For A Friend

A psychologist friend of mine diagnosed Trump last night. Prognosis doesn't sound good-- for us. "Trump’s ego has dissipated and his id has risen to the surface of consciousness. Trump has realized he can do whatever he wants and he is letting his id loose. It is growing and morphing into a lethal andromeda strain. A malicious, gleeful, vindictive, wrecking crew of impulses is on the move." Schumer warned him of "severe consequences" if he shuts down the Mueller investigation. Oh, yeah, that'll stop him. I think it was the Washington Post that hissed from the sidelines that we're a country of laws. Oh, yeah, that's shut him down for sure. Nothing will stop him-- short of American Secret Service martyrs on a level of Satwant Singh and Beant Singh. 30 bullets... wow!

And his Republican enablers-- in Congress and in the media-- have gotten more aggressive... not in the slightest bit outraged. ICE agents haven't been rounding up MS-13 members in California... they're been rounding up just normal folks... IN CALIFORNIA. And no one seems to be able to do anything about it.

Meanwhile one piece of shit from a gerrymandered Virginia district, Trump fellator Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a hideously racist, xenophobic, Trumpist immigration bill, Securing America’s Future Act, which funds the Great Wall of Trump, end the kind of family-based visas that Melania just used to get her family over here, and create a guest worker program that's somewhat better than indentured servitude. Oh, yeah-- and withhold federal funds from "sanctuary cities." Don't ask me why there are Hispanic Republicans but, somehow, Hispanic Republicans-- or some at least-- are giving Goodlatte some pushback.

Goodlatte put together a propaganda event last week to tout all these Hispanic groups that back his bill. But the groups his office said were coming didn't show up and many denounced Goodlatte and his fascist bill, like the Latino Coalition. Omar Franco, from the Latino Coalition-- and former chief of staff for Mario Diaz Balart (R-FL)-- said he opposes the bill. "That bill," he said, "is a sellout to the entire community, we would never support something like that." Goodlatte had promised Rev. Tony Suárez and Rev. Gus Reyes of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Lourdes Aguirre of Eres America, and Danny Vargas, the former chairman of the National Republican Hispanic Assembly would all be there. None of them showed up.

Mario López, head of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, a conservative advocacy organization, opposes the bill described the bill as "a piece of shit," the exact same way I described Goodlatte!

With every Democrat in the House opposing it, the bill doesn't have the 218 Republican votes it needs to pass and move on to the Senate and Señor Trumpanzee. Who thinks it will stop Trump's agenda? Who thinks anything will stop Trump's destruction of American norms? Can he get away with shutting down the Mueller investigation? He's going to try... and ta majority of congressional Republicans back him. A majority... most of them. It looks like nearly all of them.

Over the weekend, there was a lot of buzz about Peter Baker's NY Times piece, Trump and the Truth: A President Tests His Own Credibility. Señor T "has made so many claims that stretch the bounds of accuracy," he wrote, "that full-time fact-checkers struggle to keep up. Most Americans long ago concluded that he is dishonest, according to polls. While most presidents lie at times, Trump’s speeches and Twitter posts are embedded with so many false, distorted, misleading or unsubstantiated claims that he has tested even the normally low standards of U.S. politics."

Trump’s presidency has been marked from the start with false or misleading statements, such as his outlandish claims that more people came to his inauguration than any before and that more than 3 million people voted illegally against him, costing him the popular vote. He has gone on to assert that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, a claim that his own Justice Department refuted, and that he would not benefit from his tax-cutting plan.

The lack of fidelity to facts has real-world consequences in both foreign affairs and domestic policymaking. Foreign diplomats and lawmakers of both parties say they do not assume anything he says is necessarily true. In a White House where one aide described the existence of “alternative facts” and another acknowledged telling “white lies,” staff members scramble to defend his claims without putting their own credibility on the line. News organizations debate when to use the word “lie” because it implies intent.

...Advisers say privately that Trump may not always be precise, but is speaking a larger truth that many Americans understand. Flyspecking, tut-tutting critics in the news media, they say, fail to grasp the connection he has with a section of the country that feels profoundly misled by a self-serving establishment. To them, the particular facts do not matter as much as this deeper truth.

...As a businessman, Trump often fabricated or exaggerated to sell a narrative or advance his interests. In his memoir, The Art of the Deal, he called it “truthful hyperbole” or “innocent exaggeration.”

When trying to lure investors to a hotel project, he had bulldozers dig on one side of the site and dump the dirt on the other to give the impression that the project was making progress. He would call reporters and pretend to be a publicity agent for himself named John Barron. He claimed to earn $1 million from a speech when it was $400,000. He claimed to be worth $3.5 billion when seeking a bank loan, four times what the bank eventually found.

“He’s a salesman and that’s not about telling the truth, that’s not the DNA about being a salesman,” said Gwenda Blair, the author of The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President, a biography of his family. “The DNA of being a salesman is telling people what they want to hear. And he’s got it.”

Jack O’Donnell, who was president of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, recalled Trump telling New Jersey authorities that he had secured bank financing for a new casino and would not use junk bonds, only to turn around and then use junk bonds.

“In my experience with him, there are times when he just compulsively lies, and there are times when he strategically lies,” said O’Donnell, who wrote a scathing book about Trump. “In both regards, after he says something, I do think he believes that whatever he says becomes his reality. That’s my experience with him. It doesn’t have to be anything big, but it certainly can be.”

Trump continued his practice as president. The Washington Post’s fact-checker documented more than 2,000 false or misleading claims in Trump’s first year in office, a rate of more than five a day, many of them repeated even after he was corrected.

Polls show that only 35 percent of Americans consider him honest, while 60 percent do not. In their first terms, more than 50 percent considered Bush honest and more than 60 percent considered Obama honest, although those numbers fell for both by their second terms.

Republicans as well as Democrats express concern. Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and former Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, has a new book coming out in May called Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us. On the cover is an illustration of Trump with a Pinocchio nose.

Her explanation is that Trump’s supporters do not see deception, they see a commitment to winning. “Donald Trump’s lies and fabrications don’t horrify America,” says the publisher’s summary of her book. “They enthrall us.”

We've all got to keep our eyes on the ball-- the one way to actually slow him down: defeating Republicans in November, as many as possible, and replacing them with courageous Democrats, not wooses. You ready for that? Please consider supporting the progressive Democratic candidates running for the House that you'll find by clicking on the Blue America thermometer on the right. There is virtually no other way to slow this maniac, seemingly hell-bent on destroying our country, down. We can do it; if this post sounded pessimistic, I'm extremely optimistic. What happened in PA-18 Tuesday indicates Democrats can win over 100 seats in November. That means impeachment, not any kind of need for Satwant Singh and Beant Singh.